When in Doubt, Zoom Out
Back when I was a practicing psychotherapist, I would occasionally counsel the parents of what you might call “challenging” adolescents. Often the parents might be in conflict about what approach to take in dealing with their teen’s behavior, but everyone’s attitude seemed to improve when I asked them to “zoom out.”
Our perspective influences both what we see and what we feel. The parable about the blind men trying to describe an elephant captures what can occur when our point of view keeps us too close to a problem. Each man touched a different part of the elephant and based his opinion on what he could feel. Of course, they all disagreed, but it was still the same elephant.
We are fortunate to be only blindfolded, rather than blind. In the case of the adolescent, if the parents can zoom out to see their child’s life as under construction, and especially to see that their own lives were also under construction when they were the same age as their child, they can sometimes get a more useful and compassionate perspective that helps them to see more options for what to do.
The idea of something being under construction, or “in process,” can be very helpful, whether you’re considering the development of a child, the path of your career or the attainment of life goals. Picture a map, to use a different analogy: when you zoom out, you can see more of the surrounding circumstances and perhaps plot a different route. You may even reconsider where you were going in the first place, or you may be better able to wait while you gather more information.
This approach also applies to the political unrest that is troubling not just our nation, but the entire world, today. I’m definitely not saying that you must agree with the “other side.” I’m saying that by zooming out, we may become better able to see the fears and hopes that we all share, rather than just the specific ways some people’s fears and hopes make us angry. If we don’t look so closely at one event, or one person, that we strongly disagree with, we will have a better chance to come together to search for next steps towards solutions.
For example, it’s a universal fact that parents want to protect and nurture their children. If we keep that belief front and center in our hearts and minds, we can discuss library books and gun ownership without having knock-down, dragout fights where we only yell at each other and don’t listen at all.
A beautiful example was a recent op-ed column in the Express-News written by a “gun rights” advocate who opposes raising the age limit for purchasing an assault rifle. I was not expecting to find any common ground in the article, since I believe the age limit should be raised to 21. However, as I read his proposal to require more of the 18-21 year olds who want to purchase these guns, such as training, and allowing scrutiny of their mental health history, I found myself thinking I could support an idea like that. Both the author of the column and I, the reader, had to zoom out to be able to see a possible step that we could each agree with.
Extreme positions, whether in handling relationships or in making decisions that affect other people, lend themselves to misunderstanding and resistance. The wish to solve problems unilaterally, supporting only one point of view, leads to poor decisions that often make things worse. We are seeing this at both ends of the political spectrum today.
Just as an experiment, think of something that’s bothering you about life today and try zooming out to see the big picture, expanding your view in both space and time. A good place to start might be to remember how you felt about, and interacted with, the world when you were a teenager.
Susan Hull is a retired clinical psychologist, Independent voter and (reluctant) lover of all humans, in spite of how difficult we can make life sometimes.